Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Brickfix wrote:
If plasma is supposed to be anti-infantry, going from S6 to S7 makes no difference against T3,4,5 in the current rules, if I remember correctly.
It would either require a good AP bonus to be worth it, or a special rule to make it more effective against infantry but not tanks.
Otherwise nobody would ever overcharge when not firing at a T7 vehicle, ironically.

I'd totally still be overcharging for the 2w a lot of the time.

But dropping Plasma to S6-7, and then bringing back the old to-wound chart would be great though. To which I also advocate that strength doubling toughness is auto-wound, the more I think about it. When your Lascannon fails to wound a guardsmen or whatever on a 1, that always sucks. Also, it'll reduce rolling in a minor way.

Edit: In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Hecaton wrote:
Or you could have the melta specifically gain bonuses to wound or damage vs. Vehicles. Honestly lascannons should have it too.

From a pure dice math point of view you could, but only at the expense of fluff problems. A melta gun isn't a subtle attack on a vehicle's systems like a haywire weapon, it's a brute force weapon that destroys vehicles by vaporizing large pieces of them. It doesn't make any sense that a melta gun would have a bonus to wounding vehicles but that bonus somehow wouldn't apply to a weaker target.

Yes, the state where marine players just get blown of the table and their characters feel as if they made from paper tissue, and feel bad, especialy if they can't be run with a bike or jump pack option is the best way to do it.

And how does it end? Custodes armies consisting of 2-4 tanks and 6-9 dreandoughts and maybe ~10 infantry models. Good for a faction with big robots though, and shield drones.

But okey lets not bring back marine resiliance. Lets give them what they really should have. Drop pod and transports out of which they can charge out of. Demons can already do that from 7-8" away, why not marines. It is in the lore. Pod drops and marines are in instant action. My GK teleport in to melee in their lore.

 Insectum7 wrote:
But dropping Plasma to S6-7, and then bringing back the old to-wound chart would be great though. To which I also advocate that strength doubling toughness is auto-wound, the more I think about it. When your Lascannon fails to wound a guardsmen or whatever on a 1, that always sucks. Also, it'll reduce rolling in a minor way.

I agree that it would help in the specific case of reducing the overlap between plasma and melta but at what cost? Changing the core mechanics of the wound table means re-balancing a ton of weapons across the entire game and probably creating other situations where X is the obvious choice for everything and Y is redundant.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Karol wrote:
Yes, the state where marine players just get blown of the table and their characters feel as if they made from paper tissue,

Sorry, but if a melta gun/railgun/etc hits your marine character that character is dead, period. It doesn't matter how much stubborn refusal to give up you have if you're a neat little pile of ash or bloody puddle sprayed across the surrounding terrain. Lore matters more than competitive balance in the hellscape of post-apocalyptic Poland.

Dudeface wrote:
It would still have an extra point of strength and damage, but just be s6 base and s7 overcharged, which admittedly seems a lot healthier to diversify the weapons.

I don't think it needs the overcharge at all. It certainly didn't for 3rd-7th, and people use 'em just fine. S7 all the time.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
It would still have an extra point of strength and damage, but just be s6 base and s7 overcharged, which admittedly seems a lot healthier to diversify the weapons.

I don't think it needs the overcharge at all. It certainly didn't for 3rd-7th, and people use 'em just fine. S7 all the time.

Then what pray tell is the point of Auto-cannons? The 48" S7 D2 "Generalist anti-elite infantry" weapon? S7 is a completely useless S value the majority of the time. It's wasted against anything T3, and it's not as effective against T4 as other things, and it's worthless against T8.

Plasma and melta weapons I always felt were weapon solutions in search of a problem.

I never played before 7th, so maybe things were different in 3rd or something, but Melta at least has a range tradeoff. Where as Plasma is got the Range, the strength, and the wounding ability.

If 10th keeps plasma around I hope they do it in a manner befitting it's true nature. It should have S* (*auto-wounds infantry on a hit, and overcharge auto-wounds vehicles, but anything below a 3+ is a dead bearer.)

Make it more risk for the reward. My 2c.

Range 24" RF1 S7 AP-3 D2 Gets Hot isn't much better than Range 48" Heavy 2 S7 AP-1 D2 assuming re-rolls aren't ubiquetos and tables and terrain don't completely invalidate long-ranged weapons and AP-1 isn't the same as AP- because of AoC. Autocannons were considered a problem at the beginning of 8th because they were too versatile.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
But dropping Plasma to S6-7, and then bringing back the old to-wound chart would be great though. To which I also advocate that strength doubling toughness is auto-wound, the more I think about it. When your Lascannon fails to wound a guardsmen or whatever on a 1, that always sucks. Also, it'll reduce rolling in a minor way.

I agree that it would help in the specific case of reducing the overlap between plasma and melta but at what cost? Changing the core mechanics of the wound table means re-balancing a ton of weapons across the entire game and probably creating other situations where X is the obvious choice for everything and Y is redundant.

You mean like didn't really happen when the table shifted from 7th to 8th? Most weapons stayed the same Range, Strength and at least a similar shot count, and there was a rough guide between the two AP systems (AP4 to AP -1, then improve a step for a step). Damage is the wild card here, as pretty much everything only did D1 in the previous paradigm.

Care to define the "cost" that was experienced there?

H.B.M.C. wrote:

Dudeface wrote:
It would still have an extra point of strength and damage, but just be s6 base and s7 overcharged, which admittedly seems a lot healthier to diversify the weapons.

I don't think it needs the overcharge at all. It certainly didn't for 3rd-7th, and people use 'em just fine. S7 all the time.

The point here being that, given the Gets Hot, the S7 was the overcharged mode in that edition. S6/1D for normal vs. S7/2D/Gets Hot for overcharged (I don't think the AP should change between the two, but I'd be open for a discussion) differentiates them from each other, and from Melta weapons. There's nothing saying you ever have to use the safe mode, but it is there should you see a use case for it.

If it's S6 as standard, there's no reason to use it. Overcharging it to just get S7 wouldn't be worth it compared to other guns.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:
Then what pray tell is the point of Auto-cannons? The 48" S7 D2 "Generalist anti-elite infantry" weapon? S7 is a completely useless S value the majority of the time. It's wasted against anything T3, and it's not as effective against T4 as other things, and it's worthless against T8.

It's not an "anti-elite infantry" weapon and never has been. It's an anti-light vehicle weapon, and once upon a time it was frickin' fantastic at it. The best weapon you could ever put in a Guard Squad, especially with that reach-out-and-touch-you 48" range.

The fact that GW turned vehicles into stupid big monsters that can shoot through themselves is not the fault of the Autocannon.

The game desperately needs USRs to be added, and add "anti-tank" and "anti-infantry" to weapons depending on what their use is

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's not an "anti-elite infantry" weapon and never has been. It's an anti-light vehicle weapon, and once upon a time it was frickin' fantastic at it. The best weapon you could ever put in a Guard Squad, especially with that reach-out-and-touch-you 48" range.

The fact that GW turned vehicles into stupid big monsters that can shoot through themselves is not the fault of the Autocannon.

Hmmm. I kind of remember them being bad. I guess respectable enough for popping rhinos (AV 11) but that's about it. Once you hit AV12 they dropped off considerably - and sufficient bolters could pop AV10 light vehicles (most of which were bad anyway from memory).

Tyel wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
It's not an "anti-elite infantry" weapon and never has been. It's an anti-light vehicle weapon, and once upon a time it was frickin' fantastic at it. The best weapon you could ever put in a Guard Squad, especially with that reach-out-and-touch-you 48" range.

The fact that GW turned vehicles into stupid big monsters that can shoot through themselves is not the fault of the Autocannon.

Hmmm. I kind of remember them being bad. I guess respectable enough for popping rhinos (AV 11) but that's about it. Once you hit AV12 they dropped off considerably - and sufficient bolters could pop AV10 light vehicles (most of which were bad anyway from memory).

I seem to recall the hydra being a transport shredding menace for a while, but they've always been a little short on punch when the same units often get access to a missile launcher or las cannon. But yes, keywords seem a simple solution to the issue.

I remember Grey Knight Rifleman dreads being scary because they could be boosted to S8, good BS and twin-linked.

I actually think the core rules are really good. As always, we are hitting the limits of design space for a d6 differentiated game, but otherwise, the engine of 40k is realyly good, in my opinion.

the ecosystem of the codexs though... are a fantastic mess. Sprawling layers of rules upon rules, stacks of options were 80% are just garbage, and wildly inconsistent philosophies.

So, I'd like 10th to be, at most, a tweak to 9th edition. But I wouldn't cry at a complete nuke of the codices and a refresh.

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Eternal Warrior is an ok USR. It's all in the usage of it. GW gonna GW, sure, but a disciplined implementation of it would be fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
But dropping Plasma to S6-7, and then bringing back the old to-wound chart would be great though. To which I also advocate that strength doubling toughness is auto-wound, the more I think about it. When your Lascannon fails to wound a guardsmen or whatever on a 1, that always sucks. Also, it'll reduce rolling in a minor way.

I agree that it would help in the specific case of reducing the overlap between plasma and melta but at what cost? Changing the core mechanics of the wound table means re-balancing a ton of weapons across the entire game and probably creating other situations where X is the obvious choice for everything and Y is redundant.

So rebalance it. I'm all for it.

Hot take: GW has never been ever to make more than three options viable, and I doubt anybody could. Don't even bother with more than two to three options for any given slot.

FezzikDaBullgryn wrote:

Then what pray tell is the point of Auto-cannons? The 48" S7 D2 "Generalist anti-elite infantry" weapon? S7 is a completely useless S value the majority of the time. It's wasted against anything T3, and it's not as effective against T4 as other things, and it's worthless against T8.

Pretty sure Autocannons were also about being anti-light-vehicle. Also, while they don't have the AP of Plasma, they have a much, much longer range and don't kill their user.

If you want to look at why Autocannons currently such, there are two culprits and neither of them are plasma:
1) Heavy Bolters had their damage doubled in 9th and have 50% more shots. Because of the wounding chart, the Autocannon's +2 strength often makes little to no difference.
2) Armour of Contempt means that Autocannons had their damage blunted against all Marine units and vehicles. Almost as if AoC was a terrible idea.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.

FWIW, I don't think Eternal Warrior was an inherently bad rule. It makes a degree of sense that some creatures in the 40k universe (e.g. Daemons) can survive damage that would be lethal to 'normal' creatures of their size.

The issue is that (like many rules) it was implemented in a manner that heavily favoured certain factions, particularly Marines. There were dozens of Marine Characters with EW (and, in 7th, many ways to give even generic characters EW), whilst other factions had no units with EW at all.

This might not have been so bad . . . except that a lack of EW frequently correlated with a lack of other defences. The Tyranid codex was perhaps the most egregious example of this. They had a ton of multi-wound models but very few (if any?) had EW. Okay. But then they also had almost no models with invulnerable saves, even weak ones. So if the enemy had high-strength weapons or (worse still) Force Weapons, they had basically no defence at all.

This ended up creating some odd interactions. For example, Grey Knights are supposed to be an anti-Daemon army. And, to counter Daemons, they were equipped with Force Weapons that ignored armour saves and (with a psychic tst) inflicted Instant Death. However, Daemons all had invulnerable saves *and* all had Eternal Warrior - making both aspects of Force Weapons all but worthless against them. Contrast that with the above and you end up with Grey Knights being far more anti-Tyranid than anti-Daemon.


All that aside, I don't think Instant Death should return in its old form. Instead, it seems more logical to remove some/all of the randomness from damage rolls. For example, if a Melta inflicted a minimum of 5 damage, then it will be Instant Death against most normal characters (invulnerable saves notwithstanding).

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.

It wasn't just Marine players complaining about Instant Death as a mechanic. Tyranids with their midsized critters, Daemon players with their greater Daemons and Princes, Orks with their Nobz, etc.

Instant Death was a garbage mechanic and the damage stat on weapons is one of the few things GW did correctly.

I do find it hilarous that GW introduced a USR in HH that is basically a damage stat instead of actually introducing a damage stat. Classic GW over-complication.

Yes, very few, if any, games benefit from representing toughness with making it harder to do any damage, rather than being able to absorb more damage. 40k obviously does both, but adding multi damage weapons really go rid of a lot of the goofiness inherent in the old system.

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.

It wasn't just Marine players complaining about Instant Death as a mechanic. Tyranids with their midsized critters, Daemon players with their greater Daemons and Princes, Orks with their Nobz, etc.

Instant Death was a garbage mechanic and the damage stat on weapons is one of the few things GW did correctly.

ID was a great mechanic when used properly, such as when Synapse granted EW . . . And Marine commanders couldn't get it.

Damage stat is good too though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Tyran wrote:
I do find it hilarous that GW introduced a USR in HH that is basically a damage stat instead of actually introducing a damage stat. Classic GW over-complication.

Really? That's kind of hilarious.

Really don't think instant death was a good mechanic - and the fact GW had to try and fix it with EW sort of says it all.

 Insectum7 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.

It wasn't just Marine players complaining about Instant Death as a mechanic. Tyranids with their midsized critters, Daemon players with their greater Daemons and Princes, Orks with their Nobz, etc.

Instant Death was a garbage mechanic and the damage stat on weapons is one of the few things GW did correctly.

ID was a great mechanic when used properly, such as when Synapse granted EW . . . And Marine commanders couldn't get it.

Damage stat is good too though.

They can both work, as long as gw shows some discipline. For example, say that they do what Vipoid suggested, and make melta weapons D5. Cool, basically Instant Death, until......gw starts making characters/units with 6W. Then suddenly it isn't. Something like that has to be used sparingly, same as EW. And we know that they had trouble doing that previously. They need to start with a plan and stick to it, whichever system that they use.

Tyel wrote:
Really don't think instant death was a good mechanic - and the fact GW had to try and fix it with EW sort of says it all.

It's the sort of mechanic that makes sense: a small chance of one shotting a powerful model, that leads to all kinds of feel bad moments. It's very logical type of mechanic that people hate.

 Polonius wrote:

Tyel wrote:
Really don't think instant death was a good mechanic - and the fact GW had to try and fix it with EW sort of says it all.

It's the sort of mechanic that makes sense: a small chance of one shotting a powerful model, that leads to all kinds of feel bad moments. It's very logical type of mechanic that people hate.

^Truth!

Also, the characters usually have invuln saves anyways. That's the protection against Lascannons vaporizing them.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Gadzilla666 wrote:

Spoiler:

 Insectum7 wrote:

EviscerationPlague wrote:

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:

 vict0988 wrote:

 Insectum7 wrote:
In fact, tack Instant Death back on to that too. Make Big Guns Great Again.

Then Eternal Warrior makes a return, bringing back the bloat.

Or we don't bring back eternal warrior and marine players can just deal with the fact that their characters aren't near-immortal gods. It was a stupid and anti-fluffy rule that never should have existed.

It wasn't just Marine players complaining about Instant Death as a mechanic. Tyranids with their midsized critters, Daemon players with their greater Daemons and Princes, Orks with their Nobz, etc.

Instant Death was a garbage mechanic and the damage stat on weapons is one of the few things GW did correctly.

ID was a great mechanic when used properly, such as when Synapse granted EW . . . And Marine commanders couldn't get it.

Damage stat is good too though.

They can both work, as long as gw shows some discipline. For example, say that they do what Vipoid suggested, and make melta weapons D5. Cool, basically Instant Death, until......gw starts making characters/units with 6W. Then suddenly it isn't. Something like that has to be used sparingly, same as EW. And we know that they had trouble doing that previously. They need to start with a plan and stick to it, whichever system that they use.

Yah, it's having the discipline that's the key. I think they're just profit-motivated away from discipline.

The single most important thing to understand about GW, both in the models and rules studios, is that they work on what they like, and they create things they think are neat. And codex designers can only work in the ecosystem that's there, so they come up with their own rules to represent how they think the army or unit should operate.

Yes GW is motivated by money, and yes, they are trying harder lately to balance the game, but for the most part, they seem like a company that allows it's creative staff to work on what they want.

It's not that GW is completely uninterested in balance, they just don't consider it nearly as big a priority as having rules that evoke the army's lore.

 vipoid wrote:


FWIW, I don't think Eternal Warrior was an inherently bad rule. It makes a degree of sense that some creatures in the 40k universe (e.g. Daemons) can survive damage that would be lethal to 'normal' creatures of their size.

The issue is that (like many rules) it was implemented in a manner that heavily favoured certain factions, particularly Marines. There were dozens of Marine Characters with EW (and, in 7th, many ways to give even generic characters EW), whilst other factions had no units with EW at all.

Indeed. GW gonna GW.

I always harped on about this back in 5th. I have no idea why they never, ever seemed to use their USRs to their fullest. You know what EW would be a useful rule on? Swarms and IG HWTs (when combined with Vulnerable to Blasts), but nope. Can't be having that, now you get the bizarre situation (which we still have today, thanks to the damage stat) where a whole swarm can get deleted by a single shot weapon, despite there being loads of creatures to a single base. Same goes for HWTs, due to GW's design quirk, they are on a single base, but they're two separate guys. Does the other guy suddenly die of shock or grief after his mate got obliterated?

Or just give them both of the above USRs, then you can have the verisimilitude of them not dying as if a single thing to high strength weapons, but at the other end you have them take double hits from blast and template weapons for the same reason.

 Polonius wrote:
The single most important thing to understand about GW, both in the models and rules studios, is that they work on what they like, and they create things they think are neat. And codex designers can only work in the ecosystem that's there, so they come up with their own rules to represent how they think the army or unit should operate.

Yes GW is motivated by money, and yes, they are trying harder lately to balance the game, but for the most part, they seem like a company that allows it's creative staff to work on what they want.

It's not that GW is completely uninterested in balance, they just don't consider it nearly as big a priority as having rules that evoke the army's lore.

You can have rules that evoke army lore while retaining design discipline within a given paradigm. GW just doesn't care to have the qualified oversight they used to.

However they also appear to have clearly accepted churn and burn, and that's a profit driven thing.

Gue'vesa Emissary wrote:


From a pure dice math point of view you could, but only at the expense of fluff problems. A melta gun isn't a subtle attack on a vehicle's systems like a haywire weapon, it's a brute force weapon that destroys vehicles by vaporizing large pieces of them. It doesn't make any sense that a melta gun would have a bonus to wounding vehicles but that bonus somehow wouldn't apply to a weaker target.

Bull, don't try and claim there'd be fluff problems. If a Melta gun is beaming radio waves it'd be incredibly efficient at energizing metal, hence the bonus against vehicles.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Polonius wrote:
The single most important thing to understand about GW, both in the models and rules studios, is that they work on what they like, and they create things they think are neat. And codex designers can only work in the ecosystem that's there, so they come up with their own rules to represent how they think the army or unit should operate.

Yes GW is motivated by money, and yes, they are trying harder lately to balance the game, but for the most part, they seem like a company that allows it's creative staff to work on what they want.

It's not that GW is completely uninterested in balance, they just don't consider it nearly as big a priority as having rules that evoke the army's lore.

Nah, GW makes unfluffy stuff all the time.